To Hear a Nightingale Page 28

  She also spent days going round country-house and auction-room sales, with Mrs Muldoon’s daughter Erin in tow. Cassie hadn’t yet got round to taking a driving test, but Erin could drive a pony and trap, so grudgingly her mother allowed her off her housemaid’s duties on the occasions Cassie needed transport. She discovered that Ireland was a place of the most utter contrast: singularly beautiful countryside, the most lovely Cassie had ever seen, and utter poverty, at a level quite unknown to her. They would drive through the lanes, she and Erin, chatting and laughing past the green pastures, and distant blue hills, while the larks sang above them, and then would arrive at a drab little village, with a couple of dirty shops and about a dozen pubs. The houses all seemed to be painted grey, or brown, and everywhere Cassie saw the same sight; little children in tattered and torn clothing, usually without shoes, and invariably filthy. Their mothers would hurry in and out of the few shops, sometimes a black shawl over their heads, while the men, when not away inside the pubs, would be standing outside in idle gossip, propping up the walls, and smoking their pipes.

  When they first went to a furniture sale, which was the contents of a large old house, Cassie had thrown poor Erin into a total confusion when she’d told her that she was so excited at the prospect of the sale, since most of the furniture was bound to be old.

  ‘Of course it will,’ Erin had replied. ‘And sure what’ll you be wanting with old things? If you’ve money to spend, you’d be better going into Dublin and buying yourself some fine new modern furniture. And maybe a nice radiogram.’

  Cassie had started to laugh.

  ‘You can’t put modern furniture in an old house, Erin. It wouldn’t look right. You need old furniture. Antiques. The kind of furniture that must have been in Claremore when my husband’s father was a boy.’

  ‘Sure I know the sort of thing, Mrs Rosse. There was lots of that old stuff. But it was so ancient, and a lot of it was falling to bits, so old Mr Rosse and me Da, they used to chop it up for firewood.’

  Cassie remembered steadying herself, by holding on tight to the edge of the dog cart, as she tried to put out of her mind’s eye what old Mr Rosse and Tomas must have warmed themselves before. Erin and she might see eye to eye about a lot of things, but furniture was most certainly not going to be one of them.

  ‘For meself,’ Erin had added with a sniff, ‘I only really likes contemporary. And then only as long as it’s not old-fashioned.

  They had arrived at the sale early, with time enough to inspect the contents. Cassie’s eyes were out on stalks when she saw some of the furniture, but Erin had remained totally unimpressed.

  ‘You wouldn’t pay more than five bob down the Quays for most of this auld rubbish,’ she had kept whispering to Cassie.

  It was the same at every sale they attended. While Cassie tried to educate Erin about antiques, Erin remained totally sceptical about them.

  ‘Look, Erin,’ Cassie would point out. This is a Regency commode. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?’

  ‘It’s got a great crack down its side!’ Erin would point back triumphantly. ‘Anyway, what do you want with a commode? There’s toilets by the score in the house.’

  Erin was greatly excited, however, by the glass and the linenware.

  ‘That’s fine cut glass, Mrs Rosse. You should buy what you can of that. And this linen’s good linen. Mam would enjoy ironing that. And look at all those napkins! There’s more table napkins there than anyone’s a right to! You’ll probably get all them for a few bob. A few bob, mind. For that’s all they’re worth.’

  At the first sale Cassie had made the mistake of bidding herself. But as soon as they heard an American accent, up went the prices. So at subsequent sales, she got Erin to bid for her, and that way she came away with what she knew were some wonderful bargains.

  ‘Neary’s is where you want to go if it’s a three-piece suite you’re after,’ Erin told Cassie one day after Cassie had bought a Victorian sofa and two library chairs. ‘I was in Neary’s with me mam last month, and they’ve a simply heavenly three-piece suite in a new sort of velvet crush.’

  At one sale Cassie did so well she had to send Tomas in the horse-box to fetch the furniture home. That day she’d bought a Regency commode, a Georgian bow-fronted chest, a set of Victorian dining chairs with leather seats, a pair of Sheffield plate wine coolers, a picture of a lady sitting sewing with her little dog, five dozen linen napkins and six pairs of linen sheets – and all for well under a hundred pounds.

  ‘What about that?’ she asked Tyrone when he came back to the house that evening.

  ‘What about what?’ Tyrone replied, sitting in a wing chair Cassie had bought the week before that he had still not noticed.

  ‘These things I’ve bought,’ she told him.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said without looking up from his paper. ‘Very nice.’

  Furniture was not one of Tyrone’s abiding passions.

  Cassie sat in front of the fire, and imagined how the picture of the lady sewing would look hanging above it, and how elegant the Regency commode would look on the opposite side of the room.

  ‘You wait till I have everything in place,’ she sighed. ‘You won’t recognise the place.’

  ‘Great,’ said Tyrone, still reading. ‘Well done.’

  And then got up with some visible relief to answer the suddenly ringing telephone.

  But Cassie was well content with her purchases. She knew enough about Tyrone by now to know that if he didn’t say anything, he was happy. And if he was happy, then what she was doing to Claremore must be right.

  Soon the Guineas was just over a week away. From what little Tyrone told her, it seemed that Villa Maria had pleased in all her work, and barring accidents, she had an outstanding chance of lifting the first of the season’s classics for fillies. Her chance got even better when on Friday there was a very strong rumour in the sporting papers that all was not well with Arthur Marshall’s filly, who was the firm pre-race favourite. Tyrone rang a scout of his in Newmarket, who confirmed that the ‘on dit’ was that the horse had pricked her foot on the gallops and was a doubtful starter.

  Tyrone seemed to take it all in his stride. He slept soundly and didn’t leave a mouthful of his food. Cassie, who was so excited she could hardly sleep, asked him how he managed to stay so calm, and he replied that it was only a race. It may be worth more money than other races, but in the final analysis, it was only a race, and as always there would only be one winner. And as always in racing, anything could happen: the horse could get boxed in, the jockey could mistime his run, or there could be an accident. Racing was entirely unpredictable. There was no such thing as a certainty.

  Monday morning proved him tragically right. Tyrone had just returned on his hack from watching the second string work, when he saw the first of the horseboxes coming up the long drive. Cassie saw them too, as she walked Brian over to the yard as she did every morning. She saw the second lorry, too. And the third and fourth. When she saw what seemed like a convoy approaching the yard, she broke into a run, knowing instinctively that there must be something very wrong.

  When she got to the yard, the first box was just drawing up. Tyrone was standing waiting for it, with an ashen face. Cassie ran to his side.

  ‘What’s happening, Tyrone?’ she asked him. ‘Whose are all those horseboxes?’

  ‘Just go back to the house, Cassie,’ he replied. ‘This is no business of yours.’

  ‘Something’s going on, Tyrone. I can tell from your face.’

  ‘Do as I tell you. Go back to the house.’

  Cassie collected Brian, who was happily rolling in some fresh manure, and obediently started back to the house. She passed the office, and looking in through the window, saw Mrs Byrne crying. Tyrone had his back to them, engaged as he was in close conversation with the driver of the first horsebox.

  Cassie opened the door of the office and went in.

  ‘What’s happening, Mrs Byrne? What have the horseboxes come for?’<
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  Mrs Byrne looked up, and seeing Cassie’s worried face, started to cry even more. But just as she started to pull herself together, and was about to tell Cassie the news, the telephone rang. Cassie glanced through the window as Mrs Byrne answered it, and saw Tyrone striding towards the office, his face black with anger. Rather than have him find her there, disobeying his direct orders, Cassie slipped out of the back door and ran with Brian into the cover of the nearby woods.

  From there she hid and watched. One by one eighteen of her husband’s best horses were taken out from their stables and loaded into the horseboxes. Tyrone’s staff stood around, silent to a man, as the cream of the yard disappeared up the ramps and into the lorries. Finally Villa Maria was led out from her stall, and Cassie, her hand to her mouth, saw Tony, the filly’s faithful lad, overcome, suddenly run out of the yard.

  Tyrone stood in the middle of the square of grass watching with his arms folded. Then when the ramp on the last box was up, and the lorries’ engines were fired, Cassie saw him walk round the side of the yard, get into his Jaguar, and roar off ahead of the horseboxes down the drive.

  Cassie had seen quite enough. She called Brian and ran all the way back to the house.

  It wasn’t until after ten o’clock that night that Tomas brought Tyrone home. He was upright, but far from sober. Too drunk even to speak. Tomas and Cassie took him upstairs, with Tomas bearing the brunt of Tyrone’s weight. As they laid him on the bed, Cassie thought with amazement how heavy a man’s body was when he was drunk. It was as if he was dead, as Tomas and she struggled to take off his jacket, trousers and shirt.

  Down in the drawing room, with Tyrone safely asleep upstairs, Cassie offered Tomas a drink, which he declined, saying he’d already taken too much. Instead he elected to tell her of the terrible event which had just occurred.

  Tomas shook his head and breathed in deeply.

  ‘The bitch has taken all her horses away,’ he said, ‘saving your presence.’

  ‘Who, Tomas?’ Cassie asked. ‘I mean who in the world would do such a thing?’

  ‘Villa Maria’s owner,’ he replied. ‘An American like yourself. By the name of Mrs Von Wagner.’

  First of all, as she lay in bed beside the fast-sleeping Tyrone, Cassie blamed herself. She had to, for her habitual guilt told her it must be her fault. If Leonora’s mother had taken all her horses away from Claremore, then it had to be Cassie’s fault. Whose else could it be?

  After all, it was Cassie who knew Leonora, and since Mrs Von Wagner was Leonora’s mother, then that had to be the reason for the removal of the horses. It had to be part of Leonora’s revenge on her, because of Cassie’s last score with the opera tickets; perhaps Leonora had suffered such a humiliating evening that in her subsequent rage she had persuaded her mother to remove all her horses, all twenty of them, from the care of Cassie’s new husband.

  All twenty of them. The twenty best horses in the yard. They were ruined. In three brief weeks of marriage Cassie had ruined her new husband’s life.

  But then she thought, why? Why should Leonora’s mother cut off her nose to spite her face for the sake of satisfying her petulant daughter? Tyrone Rosse was already being spoken of as the most promising young trainer in Ireland, and he had brought Villa Maria to her peak just at the right moment so that she was now quoted as co-favourite for the fillys’ first Classic. Would Mrs Von Wagner seriously risk upsetting her horse by removing it at the eleventh hour? And if so, surely she would have talked it over with her trainer first, if they had quarrelled? It just didn’t ring true that she should remove her horses, including the ante-post favourite for the Thousand Guineas, the week of the big race itself. It just didn’t make sense.

  Tyrone must have known Mrs Von Wagner.

  Well, of course he must have known her, Cassie corrected herself impatiently. She had twenty thoroughbreds in his keep. Of course he knew Mrs Von Wagner. But how exactly had he known her? And in what way? Cassie kept trying to push the thought out of her head, but back it kept on coming.

  She must have been his mistress.

  Then Cassie remembered the meeting in the snow outside Bergdorf Goodman. As Leonora was hijacking Cassie into the cab, Mrs Von Wagner had been about to return some unwanted items. ‘I just have to return these items to Lingerie.’

  She remembered the words exactly. And she remembered the carefully wrapped box they were in. The box Cassie had herself packed for Tyrone four days earlier. He’d been buying lingerie for Leonora’s mother.

  Tyrone had been Mrs Von Wagner’s lover.

  Cassie turned round to the figure fast asleep in the bed beside her. She suddenly felt full of violent rage. She wanted to scratch his face, kick him, punch him, sit on his chest and hit him on his stupid drunken face until he was black and blue. That afternoon when they had met, when he said he had fallen in love at first sight with her, he’d been about to go back to Leonora’s mother’s house and make love to her, probably in her brand new Bergdorf Goodman lingerie.

  Tyrone had made love to Leonora’s mother.

  It was horrible to think of. She must have been nearly forty.

  But then, instead of attacking the sleeping Tyrone, which to her chagrin she realised was against her nature, she got out of bed, and pulling on her wrap, went downstairs to the drawing room, where she opened the shutters and the long french windows, and walked out on to the terrace. It was a cold, clear, moonlit night, but Cassie was unaware of the temperature. Instead, she just stood gazing out across the moonlit grounds, and wondered what she was to do, and what was the truth of the matter. Or of any matter?

  It wasn’t Leonora’s revenge, the removal of the horses: it was her mother’s. Tyrone had obviously told her about Cassie, and perhaps she had been civilised and gracious about it, as, it seemed, people like that sometimes were. And then maybe having been ‘civilised’, she had read about their wedding, and still done nothing – because all the time she was waiting: waiting for the moment when she could really hurt Tyrone. And when she had found it, she had made her move. She had taken away Villa Maria. She had removed in one dramatic stroke her ex-lover’s greatest chance of success, even if it were to cost her the race itself.

  Still Cassie stood staring out at the moonlit estate, listening to the sounds of the night. In the darkened woods the late-hunting owls screeched and a fox barked. Heaven has no hatred, like love to hatred turned, she remembered. Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. Suddenly, reluctantly, with a pang, Cassie knew she’d grown up.

  Tyrone was up at six and gone as usual before Cassie was even awake. She got up and dressed herself slowly, remembering the events of the day and the night, before going down to breakfast. When she went into the dining room, she discovered Tyrone already at table.

  ‘I’m back early,’ he explained, as if today was the same as every day, ‘since there was only the one string to exercise.’ Cassie kissed the top of his head as she passed him by, and then sat down next to him. He smiled at her, but said nothing, turning instead as he always did, to the sporting papers.

  ‘They must have broken the story yesterday,’ he said, showing her the headlines of Sporting Life. ‘Guineas Favourite In Shock Move.’

  Then he took the paper back from her to read the story, as detached as if it had all happened to somebody else.

  ‘Won’t it make a lot of difference to Villa Maria?’ she asked him. ‘Moving somewhere strange and new just before the race?’

  Tyrone flicked the paper over to finish reading the story on the back.

  ‘If there’s a full manger in the corner of the stable and fresh straw on the floor it won’t,’ he replied. ‘She’d have had to travel over to Newmarket from here tomorrow anyway.’

  Cassie poured herself some black coffee, which was all she wanted. She marvelled at Tyrone and his iron constitution. Dead drunk only a few hours ago, with his world in pieces round him, there he was, sitting eating a huge cooked breakfast as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  �
�She’s in good hands as it happens,’ he announced, putting down Sporting Life. ‘The bitch has sent her to Dick Longmann.’

  Then he rose from the table and stretched.

  ‘Are you all right, Tyrone?’ Cassie enquired cautiously.

  ‘Now I’ve had breakfast,’ he smiled, ‘and now I’ve seen you.’

  He ambled to the door. Brian got up, yawned nervously, and followed his master to the door, anticipating a walk.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘No, Cassie McGann. I am going to get a bottle of champagne.’

  That was Tyrone. He had just suffered the heartbreak of having half his yard taken away on a whim, including the best horse he had ever trained, but he wasn’t the man to sit down and feel sorry for himself. Instead, he opened a bottle of champagne. He called Cassie from the dining room, and she went and sat by his side opposite the wood fire Erin had just lit. They drank their champagne out of some exquisite old Waterford glass Cassie had bought at a house sale and for a long time said nothing. Because for a long time there seemed to be nothing to say.

  Tyrone broke the silence.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night, Cassie,’ he said. ‘I drove over to Leixlip to see a chum. But his wife was out so we didn’t have anything to eat.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about last night, Tyrone,’ Cassie answered. ‘But please tell me about yesterday.’

  ‘Tomas said he told you,’ Tyrone replied, rising to throw more wood on the fire. He remained standing, his back to Cassie.